category theory

# Contents

## Definition

A bifibration of categories is a functor

$E \to B$

that is both a Grothendieck fibration as well as an opfibration.

Therefore every morphism $f : b_1 \to b_2$ in a bifibration has both a push-forward $f_* : E_{b_1} \to E_{b_2}$ as well as a pullback $f^* : E_{b_2} \to E_{b_1}$.

## Examples

Ordinary Grothendieck fibrations correspond to pseudofunctors to Cat, by the Grothendieck construction and hence to prestacks. For these one may consider descent.

If the fibration is even a bifibration, there is a particularly elegant algebraic way to encode its descent properties; this is monadic descent. The Benabou–Roubaud theorem characterizes descent properties for bifibrations.

## Relation to distributive laws

Fibrations and opfibrations on a category $C$ (or more generally an object of a suitable 2-category) are the algebras for a pair of pseudomonads. If $C$ has pullbacks, there is a pseudo-distributive law between these pseudomonads, whose joint algebras are the bifibrations satisfying the Beck-Chevalley condition; see (von Glehn).

## Remark

A bifibration $F:E\to B$ such that $F^{op}:E^{op}\to B$ is a bifibration as well is called a trifibration (cf. Pavlović 1990, p.315).

## References

Revised on June 16, 2017 12:05:23 by Mike Shulman (76.167.222.204)